1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image management apparatus, an image management method, and a storage medium that can perform version management of image data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, measures to environmental problems have been taken in various fields. Development of paperless offices has rapidly progressed, and various techniques for handling electronic documents have been proposed.
For example, a multifunction peripheral for office use (an image processing apparatus having a plurality of functions including a copying function, a printing function, and a transmitting function) scans an original document and stores data obtained by scanning the original document in a storage unit such as a hard disk drive (HDD) unit in the multifunction peripheral. Thereafter functions of browsing, transmitting, editing, printing of the data are provided therein.
Furthermore, in recent years, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-246577, a technique has been proposed that searches for original data, which is the basic data stored in the HDD, the searched original data and the newly scanned data are compared, and then the differential data is searched.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-77581, a technique in relation to a “version management system” has been proposed in which the multifunction peripheral compares the original data with newly scanned data and manages the acquired differential information as a new version of the original data.
However, this technique does not consider the generation of a plurality of “branches” when managing versions using a digital multifunction peripheral. This situation arises when managing versions using a data tree structure.
For example, it is assumed that a plurality of derivative versions are produced as new versions in which revisions and corrections have been applied to the original image data. Further, derivative versions are produced in which revisions and corrections are applied to the plurality of derivative versions.
The junction at which the original data branches from an original version to a derivative version is termed a branch and is the origin of a system from which a plurality of derivative versions are produced based on the original data in a data tree structure. Data after the branch is termed the derivative version. The version in the lowest layer of the data that branches from the derivative versions to which further revision and correction of the derivative versions is applied is termed the terminal version of the branch.
When there is a plurality of such branches, a user is confronted by an extremely large number of options when selecting data of a required version from a list using a user interface (UI) for outputting or browsing the data. Thus, the user operation becomes complicated.